2012 Pirelli Road Race Series - Round 1
Featuring a Sprint series, Tourist Trophy series and Feature event at every round, the PRRS season opener saw veteran racer Steve Tozer take victory in both the Sprint and TT formats.
Mounted on a BMW S 1000RR, Tozer didn't have it all his own way, having to adapt to a new bike 'on the fly', with he and his team setting up the bike throughout the race weekend. On the track, the wily veteran also had to contend with a very fast chasing pack, too. After qualifying fourth on the grid, Tozer would go on to finish 1-3-1 in Saturday's trio of 9 lap Sprint races, giving him a total of 72 points to edge out Ben Hooke on 60 and Kris Parnell on 58 points.
Sunday saw competitors take on the TT format, comprising two 18 lap races around the 2.16km Broadford circuit. In a field loaded with Superbike & Pirelli Superstock 1000 class machines, this provided some of the best racing of the round. At the conclusion of both TT stanzas, Tozer and Parnell were tied on 47 points each in the Superbike class both, but Tozer won on a countback as he finished second in race 2 to Parnell's third. Third overall in the TT was Ben Hooke on 40 points.
"It was a good weekend," Tozer said. "I got pushed along by the Superstock guys this weekend, but come out on top on a count back on points. It's a new bike were just in the middle of setting that up and hopefully get things better for the next round and I can take straight wins".
In the Superstock 1000 class, Matthew Partridge impressed, not only taking his Honda CBR 1000RR to a class victory in both the Sprint and TT races, but also winning the second TT race outright, beating Tozer to the line by 4.971 seconds!
In the Supersport class, the dominant performance of Ryan Taylor on a Superstock 600 Yamaha R6 was the talk of the meet. The 24-year-old almost made it look too easy as he took pole on Saturday, three wins from three starts in the Sprint series, then annihilated the Supersport field in both the TT races. If the 14 second winning margin wasn't enough, the fact that Taylor did the business on a bike that wasn't even his was made his results even more impressive.
In the juniors, outright victory went to Ted Collins (150cc), Jacob Whitehouse (80cc) & Zackary Johnson (70cc).
Due to a lengthy delay in the schedule caused by an accident in the OZ Bear F1 class, the originally scheduled running of the 61st Harvie Wiltshire Memorial Trophy race has been postponed until round three of the Pirelli Road Race Series, to be held at Winton Motor Raceway on July 22.
Given the amount of enthusiasm shown at Broadford, it looks like event organisers, the Preston Motor Cycle Club are on a winner with this series. With strong fields, low entry fees, mixed formats and respectable prizemoney ($50K across the season), the Pirelli Road Race Series is sure to get bigger and better as the word gets out!
Round 2 of the Pirelli Road Race Series will be held at South Australia's Mac Park on June 9 and 10 (Queens Birthday weekend).
Entry details, round reports and more information on the series can be found at the official series website - www.rrseries.com.au